Stan Paregien, Editor
Lewis Nordyke
(Deceased)
Lewis Nordyke was born near Cottonwood, Texas, on a farm that was such scrub land that it only produced corn with "nubbins" instead of full-grained ears of corn. That is how his autobiography, Nubbin Ridge, received it's name (the book was published by Doubleday after his death).He began writing items for national farm magazines when he was just 14-years-old. At the age of 16 he quit school to take up ranching. But five years later, realizing he needed more education to really have success as a writer, he enrolled at Tarleton State College. When he graduated, the college hired him to teach there.
Two years later, he began more studies at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. There he met Dorothy Alice Beeman of Amarillo. They both graduated in 1935 and immediately married. They moved back to Texas, where Lewis got a job with a Texas weekly earning $15 per week. He moved from that to the Associated Press in Dallas, then to the Amarillo Globe-News, and then back East to be the editor of Country Gentleman.
But they soon moved back to Amarillo, and he began freelancing to magazines. He wrote one article per week for 52 weeks in 1938, and managed to only sell one of them. But in 1939 he sold to Reader's Digest and to Collier's. He became a regular contributor to Saturday Evening Post in 1943, and he did 10 to 14 book reviews per year for the New York Times, from 1951 until his death. His books included Cattle Empire (1949), John Wesley Hardin, Texas Gunman and The Truth About Texas.
Lewis Nordyke, 54, died of a heart attack while visiting in Marfa, Texas on July 8, 1960. (See his obituary, as well as his photo and his last article, in the Aug., 1960 issue of The Roundup.)
Chuck Norris
Chuck Norris, karata expert and actor, was born Carlos Ray Norris on March 10, 1940 in Ryan, Oklahoma. His mother was the stable element in his life, as his father (a Native American Indian) was an alcoholic and left the family for long periods of time.
Mrs. Norris moved her family to California when Chuck was eleven. He finished high school there, then joined the U.S. Air Force. It was while stationed in Korea that he took courses in the martial arts. And he moved up the ranks to become a world champion. In fact, he was named World Karate Champion six times. . In 1996, he became the first Westerner to be awarded an eighth-degree black belt in Tae Kwan Do
Actor Steve McQueen was the one who originally encouraged him to give acting a try. Norris made over twenty films, most of them martial arts and/or action films with considerable violence.
Chuck Norris then found his nitch playing the lead character, Cordell Walker, in the long-running TV show, "Walker, Texas Ranger". It ran for 203 episodes, from 1993 to May 12, 2001. That show often featured spiritual and moral themes, an emphasis which Norris wholeheartedly embraced. No wonder then that the Christian Television and Film Commission presented the show with its Epiphany Award -- not once, but twice.
He has been deeply involved in the Make-A-Wish-Foundation, and founded his own non-profit organization called Kick Drugs out of America (KDOOA). He has written two books: The Secret of Inner Strength and The Secret Power Within - Zen Solutions to Real Problems.
Chuck Norris and his second wife, Gena O'Kelley, live on their own large ranch due east of Dallas. They raise Longhorn and Brangus cattle.
CLICK HERE to go to the official Chuck Norris web page, complete with his entire filmography.
Howard Norskog
Howard Norskog, cowboy poet, has been featured at numerous cowboy gatherings throughout the United States and Canada. He has also made commercials for both the Idaho Potato Commission and for Phillip Morris.
In 1999 Howard Norskog was inducted into Idaho Cowboy Poets Hall of Fame. He lives in St. Anthony, Idaho.
Diane M.T. North
Diane M.T. North is the author of Samuel Peter Heintzelman and the Sonora Exploring & Mining Company (University of Arizona Press, 1980).
Dick North
Dick North is a newspaper writer by profession, but spends his summers as the curator of the Jack London Exhibit in Dawson City, Yukon Territory. He is the author of two nonfiction works, The Mad Trapper of Rat River and The Lost Patrol (Alaska Northwest, 1978), both of which were made into films by Canadian companies.
Doyce B. Nunis, Jr.
Doyce B. Nunis, Jr. is the author of The Mexican War in Baja California (Dawsons, 1977), Francis J. Weber: The Monsignor of the Archives (Dawsons, 1983), California Diary of Faxon Dean Atherton (California Historical Society, 1964), The 1769 Transit to Venus (Natural History Museum, 1982).
Nelson Nye
Nelson Coral Nye was born in Chicago, Ill. on Sept. 28, 1907. His father was an engineer and wanted him to attend M.I.T., but young Nelson headed off to Cincinnati University and majored in art. It was during this period of living what he describes as "the Bohemian life" he met and went into double harness with Ruth Hilton. And it was she who suggested, after seeing his inability to make much money with his art, to try writing.
So Nelson Nye sat down and ground out a Western short story, then mailed it to Thrilling Western. Two weeks later a check arrived for $45. That was big money in the 1930's, so he thought he had it made. However, he didn't sell another story for two years. And it wasn't until he studied writing under Laurence D'Orsay and Arthur Sullivant that he began to sell regularly.
He spent his early years as a bonifide spit-and-whittle ranch hand in Texas and California, then he raised quarter horses on his own ranch in New Mexico. He also worked as a publicity writer for newspapers in the Northeast, and he was the horse editor for Texas Livestock Journal during 1949-51.
Nelson Nye is one of the founding fathers of the WWA, a group for which he twice served as president (1953 and 1960-61). He had this to say about the beginning of the WWA: "About the middle of 1952, after the demise of the pulp paper magazines, I had a letter from Tommy Thompson bemoaning the sad state of Westerns and the glorious situation of mysteries, detective yarns and suspense stories. They were getting reviews, movie contracts and much publicity. One of us suggested how about starting an organization similar to Mystery Writers of America. We both like the idea and Tommy said he was a good friend of Anthony Boucher, at the time president of MWA, and that maybe he could get us a look at their Charter and their eight years of amendments. Tony had MWA's executive secretary send these to us.
"After some additional correspondence I wrote the original preamble and sent it and the MWA material on to Norman Fox in Great Falls and he agreed, with adaptations, to pound out a Constitution for our prospective organization.
"D.B. Newton was brought in as secretary-treasurer. Wayne Overholser got interested and joined the correspondence. We all wrote friends asking them to join and WWA was formed by a couple dozen novelists. These were asked to send on their dues and, in April of 1953, the first Roundup was mimeographed." And so the WWA was started.
Nelson Nye twice served as president of WWA. A review that he did of the book Hoofs and Horns in 1954 won him a Spur from the WWA. His book, Long Run, won a Spur in 1959 as best novel of the year. And in 1968 his peers voted to present him with the Saddleman Award for his outstanding contributions to the West. Nelson Nye's phenomenal output includes books that fall into such diverse categories as recreation and hobbies to adventure, animals and, of course, Westerns. Nye sometimes wrote as Clem Colt or Drake C. Denver. In 1972, Ace Books simultaneously released reprints of 13 Nelson Nye westerns.
In the Nov.-Dec., 1987 issue of The Roundup Nye, then 80 years young, wrote: "After writing no books since August, 1969, come Jan. 14, 1986, with other pursuits in abeyance I wondered if I could still write a salable book. So in five weeks and two days, eight hours every day, I turned out one called Mule Man which I sent off to Doubleday and lo and behold they bot (his usage) it." He wrote 10 books in 1986 and 4 by September of 1987. And he sold almost every one! (See letters from him in the May, 1985 issue and January, 1988 issue of The Roundup.)
Writing as Drake Denver, Nelson Nye's titles include Turbulent Guns (1940), The Feud at Sleepy Cat (1940), Tinbadge (1941), Wildcats of Tonto Basin (1941), Gun Quick (1942), The Desert Desperadoes (1942), Lost Water (1942), Breed of the Chaparral (1946).
Under the name of Clem Colt, Nye wrote Gun-Smoke (1938), The Shootin' Sheriff (1938), The Bar Nothing Brand (1939), Center-Fire Smith (1939), Hair-Trigger Realm (1940), Trigger-Finger Law (1940), The Five Diamond Brand (1941), Triggers for Six (1941), The Sure-Fire Kid (1942), Trigger Talk (1942), Rustlers' Roost (1943), Guns of Horse Prairie (1943), Maverick Canyon (1944), Once in the Saddle (1946), Coyote Song (1947), Saddle Bow Slim (1948), Tough Company (1952), Strawberry Roan (1953), No Tomorrow (1953), Smoke Talk (1954), Quick Trigger Country (1955).
Some of Nelson Nye's fiction books under his own name include Two Fisted Cowpoke (1936), The Killer of Cibecue (1936), The Leather Slapper (1937), Quick-Fire Hombre (1937), The Star-Packers (1937), The Waddy from Roarin' Fork (1938), G Stands for Gun (1938), Prairie Dust (1938), The Bandit of Blood Run (1939), Smoke-Wagon Kid (1943), Pistols for Hire (1941; reprinted as A Bullet for Billy the Kid in 1950), Gunfighter Breed (1942), Salt River Ranny (1942; in pb as Gunshot Trail, 1955), Come A-Smokin' (1943), Beneath the Belt (1943), Gunslick Mountain (1944), Cartridge Case Law (1944), Wild Horse Shorty (1944), Blood of Kings (1946), The Barber of Tubac (1947), Gunman, Gunman (1949).
In addition, he also wrote Riders by Night (1950), Caliban's Colt (1950), Horse is Fine People (1950), Thief River (1951), Wide Loop (1952), Desert of the Damned (1952), Hired Hand (1954), The Red Sombrero (1954), The Lonely Grass (1955), The Parson of Gunbarrel Basin (1955), Blood Sky (1956), Bandido (1957), South Fork (1957), The Overlanders (1959), The Wolf That Rode (1960), Gunfight at the OK Corral (based on the screenplay, 1960), Not Grass Alone (1961), The Irreverent Scout (1961), Rafe (1962), Hideout Mountain (1962), Death Comes Riding (1962), Death Valley Slim (1963), Treasure Trail from Tucson (1964), Sudden Country (1964), Rogue's Rendezvous (1964), Ambush at Yuma's Chimney (1965), The Bravado Brand (1965), The Marshal of Pioche (1966), Iron Hand (1966), Single Action (1967), The Trail of Lost Skulls--about dinosaurs! (1967), The Rider on the Roan (1967), A Lost Mine Named Salvation (1968), The Trouble at Pena Blanca (1969), Wolftrap (1969), Gringo (1969), The Texas Gun (1970), The Trouble at Quinn Crossing (1971), Hellbound for Ballarat (1971), Kelly (1971), and The Clifton Contract (1972).
Also under his own name, Nelson Nye wrote such nonfiction books as Outstanding Modern Quarter Horse Sires (1948), Champions of the Quarter Tracks (1950), Your Western Horse: His Ways and His Rider (1963), The Complete Book of the Quarter Horse (1964), Speed and the Quarter Horse: A Payload of Sprinters (Caxton, 1973), and Great Moments in Quarter Racing History (1981; Arco, 1982). Nye edited Western Roundup (1961) and They Won Their Spurs (1962).
This listing is far from complete and may contain errors.
Therefore, all Western entertainers and/or their agents
are requested to submit recommended changes by
contacting Stan Paregien through his e-mail address.
You are kind and forgiving, O Lord,
abounding in love to all who call to you.
Hear my prayer, O Lord;
listen to my cry for mercy.
In the day of my trouble I will call to you,
for you will answer me.
--- Bible: Psalm 86:5-7
© 2003 by Stan Paregien, Sr.